Profiling Weakens Us, King's Son Says In Nn

May 05, 2002|By BEVERLY N. WILLIAMS Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — Better education, health insurance, "target profiling" and bridging the technological divide are just some of the issues facing America and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization's national president said Saturday.

"People are being profiled, and historically, it has been because of the color of their skin," SCLC President Martin Luther King III said. "But that group has grown. It's not just African-Americans being profiled. Now it's ethnic and religious profiling, with Muslims and Arabs being profiled."

The SCLC is calling this form of profiling "target profiling" that stems from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, King said.

"Since 9-11, the civil liberties of our nation -- which were once intact -- are now being taken away because of terrorism," he said. "We believe that is wrong. We want our leaders to eradicate terrorism, but we feel there's a conservative way to do that."

To address this problem and bring more attention to it, King said, the SCLC is conducting town forums around the county.

"There are times when profiling is necessary," he said. "But we have found ... in many cases ... that profiling is wrong."

King spoke at a news conference at the Omni Hotel in Newport News. It was conducted 90 minutes before the start of the membership-drive and fund- raising banquet for the Newport News Chapter of the SCLC, where King was guest speaker.

His visit occurred the same day that the World Church of the Creator, a white-supremacist group, conducted a meeting in York County. But King, who wasn't aware of the group's meeting, and local SCLC officials said it was merely a coincidence.

"I know that these subversive groups exist, but the wonderful thing about our country is those freedoms do exist for people to meet around ideas that they believe in," King said. "I believe we should have that right, and I don't ever want to see that right abolished.

"The sad thing is that in 2002, we don't realize that we really need each other and we don't need to advocate any kind of separatism."

Andrew Shannon, president of the local SCLC chapter, didn't directly answer reporters' questions regarding the white-supremacist meeting. He preferred to talk about local issues facing his chapter, such as the proposed renaming of King- Lincoln Park in the city's East End.

"The Newport News chapter is delighted and honored, and we consider it a privilege, to have our national president here," Shannon said.

"He is here to support our chapter, and he has toured the Southeast Community and had an opportunity to look at the park."

Shannon and other Newport News residents have petitioned to rename the park after King's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who formed the SCLC and fought for blacks' civil rights until he was assassinated in 1968. The first push to change the park's name occurred shortly after King Jr.'s death and then again in 1984, when then-Mayor Jessie Rattley asked the City Council to rename it.

"Whenever something is renamed after my father, our family sees it as an honor," King III said. "We don't come in and ask for the change, but if the people want it done, then I'm 1,000 percent behind it. What it says to us is that the community has acknowledged the contributions Martin Luther King has made to this country."

His father's dream of justice and equality for everyone has yet to be realized, he said, which means there is still work to be done.

King said another big concern of the SCLC is poverty in the United States. Many of the obstacles that must be overcome, he said, are economic development, a lack of health insurance for 44 million Americans, and wage differences between men and women and between whites and minorities, he said.

"Every time we've been faced with an obstacle, the nation has rolled up its sleeves, and we've been able to face it together," he said.

"I don't believe one person ever again will galvanize everyone around issues. Every now and then, we have one leader who emerges, but one never knows if that one will mobilize us all. That's why we must work in fashion of coalitions."

Beverly N. Williams can be reached at 247-4755 or by e-mail at bwilliams@dailypress.com